Wednesday February 7, 2024

As we begin our journey through this NEW YEAR 2024 living in God's daily NEW MERCIES, I invite you to wander with me in pictures through one of Cartagena, Colombia's most fascinating neighborhoods: Getsemaní. Here, in the Plazuela del Pozo in the heart of Getsemaní.

NEW YEAR, NEW MERCIES: DAY 8

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. ~Ephesians 2:8

 

Faith isn’t natural for you and me. 

Doubt is natural. Fear is natural. Living on the basis of your collected experience is natural… Living based on the thinking of your brain and your physical senses is natural. Envying the life of someone else… wishing that you were more sovereign over people and situations… manipulating your way into personal control… is natural. Looking horizontally for the peace that you will only ever find vertically is natural. Anxiously wishing for change in things that you have no ability to change is natural. Giving way to despondency, discouragement, depression, or despair is natural. Numbing yourself with busyness, material things, media, food, or some other substance is natural… 

But faith simply isn’t natural to us. 

So, in grace, God grants us to believe. As Paul says in Ephesians 2:8, faith is the gift of God. There is no more counterintuitive function to the average, sin-damaged human being than faith in God… God gives us the power to first believe, but He doesn’t stop there. By grace He works in the situations, locations, and relationships of our everyday lives to craft, hammer, bend, and mold us into people who build life based on the radical belief that He really does exist and He really does reward those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

God.., has [not] forgotten you, [He] is near to you and doing in you a very good thing. He is rescuing you from thinking that you can live the life you were meant to live while relying on the inadequate resources of your wisdom, experience, righteousness, and strength; and He is transforming you into a person who lives a life shaped by radical God-centered faith. He is the ultimate craftsman, and we are His clay. He will not take us off His wheel until His fingers have molded us into those who really do believe.

Thank You God, that Your grace enables me not only to initially believe, but then to learn to live a life of radical faith not in my own inadequate resources, but in the infinite resources of Your wisdom, strength and goodness.